Apple Music increases subscription cost to $14.99

The cost of Apple Music will increase in December. Photo / Getty

Apple is increasing the subsription cost of its streaming service Apple Music.

Effective in December, the cost will rise from $12.99 to $14.99.

Released in July 2015, Apple Music was meant to compete with similar services such as Spotify but failed to make a strong impression.

Writing for the Washington Post, Hayley Tsukayama said the service worked well, but the cost was too high in a time when consumers are already likely to be hooked into services such as Netflix and Spotify.

Despite clocking in with 30 million subsribers in September, Apple Music has had a tough time keeping pace with the growth of Spotify, which takes up about 20 million new customers a year.

Jimmy Iovine, who runs Apple Music, acknowledged the tough race in September, telling Billboard: "Just because we're adding millions of subscribers and the old catalog numbers are going up, that's not the trick. That's just not going to hold."

Iovine has laid out plans to increase fan interaction with artists by adding exclusive content through Apple Music, including films and radio shows.